Holy Monday || Victory Church [Holy Week#1]

Hello everybody and welcome to Victory Online. We're here today with you on the second day of our Holy Week experience. My name is Stephen Hathaway. I'm here with? Liz Mendoza. Again, this is so exciting to be here with you. I'm with our special guest, Danielle Cruz. What's up everybody? My name is Danielle. I am the worship pastor here for the Norcross Campus and I am also the executive pastor of worship. And so I oversee worship for all of our campuses. Very nice. But thank you guys for having me. Well, Danielle, you're one of our favorite people for our online campus. Whenever we have people who come and join us to visit us at Norcross, one of the people they always ask to see is you. It's like, is Danielle around? Can I have a chance to meet her? Which is great. We love the way that you lead us in worship. We love your heart. And we're grateful that you can hang out with us today. And we're grateful that all of you are here as well because we're getting ready to watch the video in just a moment. But before we do, we want to encourage you

to share the stream. You might have a family member or a friend that you would like to invite to join along with us tonight. Like I see Tanya, she's watching into Kula. We have Mimi Adams as well. Jackie P, Karen, thank you all for being here. And I bet you know somebody that you would like to invite to be a part. So if you're on Facebook, YouTube, or the website, click the share button and send some encouragement over to a friend. Today's video is on Holy Monday, which is probably one of my favorite parts of being able to see Jesus's character and how he relates to us. You're going to love this video. Let's join in together. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪ Living in communion ♪ ♪ I'd give everything I am for them ♪ ♪ Oh, I long for this again ♪ ♪ Living in communion ♪ ♪ I'll give everything I am for you ♪ All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. All. So, God had instituted a system, a sacrificial system, where a person who had sinned would bring a sacrifice into the temple. And there, the priest would kill the animal, and the blood of that animal would cover over the sins of that person, so they could once again have fellowship with God. And the amazing thing was that this wasn't just for the Jewish people. The invitation was actually open to all, because God wants all to repent and come to Him. And the prophet Isaiah actually captures this in chapter 56 of God saying, their burnt offerings and sacrifices will be accepted on my altar,

for my house will be called a house of prayer for all the nations. But, over time, what starts out as pure and holy and good becomes impure and unholy and corrupt. And by the time we get to the life of Jesus, the political system and the religious system have married, and they've begun exploiting and oppressing God's people. Sinners are prevented from entering into the temple. The foreigners are being kicked out. The sacrificial system, which was supposed to be how God's people could be declared clean in His sight, just became another way for the wealthy to make even more money. Because what would happen is the pilgrims would travel far and wide to come to Jerusalem, and if you were coming to worship in the temple, you would need to bring a sacrifice. But sometimes it wasn't possible to bring the animals with you, so you would buy one at the temple. But the problem was the merchants had set up shop there, and so people had to buy the animals in the Hebrew currency. So the money changers started charging these crazy fees for the service. And once you got the right currency, then you would purchase a lamb that had been marked up one, two, five, tenfold. But maybe you did bring your sacrifice with you.

Well, the attendants would then say, well, this animal isn't good enough. So you would still be forced to purchase a marked up animal. And this place of connection, this place of worship, this place of nearness to God had become a den of thieves, a place where the meek, the humble, and the poor were taken advantage of. And God speaks of this in Jeremiah chapter seven. He says, has this house, which bears my name, become a den of robbers to you? But I've been watching, declares the Lord. So we find Jesus, the Son of God, standing in the temple in Jerusalem, and he's watching his people desperately longing to connect with God, only to see them being taken advantage of, mistreated, abused, and kept at arm's distance away from the Father again and again and again and again. What would you do if there was this relational fracture between you and the one that you love more than anything else in life, and you had established a plan to draw near to them again, yet the ones entrusted with that plan were perverting the plan and using the idea of your presence to exploit the ones that you loved? I don't know about you, but I might just start flipping tables too, because I'd do anything necessary to clean this place up. But in this place where Jesus flipped the tables out of love for you, let me flip the tables on you.

If Jesus were to stand in your heart today and look around, what would he find that has polluted your temple? What tables would Jesus flip in your life to clean your heart up, to get rid of the idols, the competition, the thieves, so it's just you and him? him again. So on this Holy Monday, a really good question to ask is, what has become welcome in my life that Jesus wants to kick out? Because sin is not your friend. And its ultimate goal is to turn your heart against God and destroy you. Man, what kind of tables would Jesus be flipping in our own lives? I love how we're able to see that, what it could have looked like when Jesus was in the temple. The live reenactment. It makes the Word come to life. And the worship along with it. Very, very powerful. And we're going to go through some questions and think about and process what we just saw and see what the Holy Spirit can speak to us even tonight. But I say us because you're involved as well. We want to be able to hear what God is speaking to your heart. So while we're answering the questions, we want to hear what you have to say. So make sure that you're putting down in the comment section and we want you to know we really do read what you put down. Last night we had a question about who would you like to invite to be a part of Easter for this upcoming weekend? And we saw so many names that were on there. We went through today and prayed over each and every one of them. Like Troy Womack last night said that he's asking for some friends to be a part of this, even through a digital format. Someone said they have a

coworker they're going to be inviting for service to join along with them this upcoming weekend. I love seeing how you guys are a part. So here's the first question. And it is what kind of emotions come up for you when you think about Jesus flipping over tables in the temple? All right. So I want to answer first and then Danielle, I want to come over to you. But for me, it reminds me of a time when I was around 19 years old and I had a friend that I kept inviting over and over to come with me to church. His name was DJ. We worked together and I told you guys where I was last night. Ingles. We eat a lot more and you pay a lot less. It was a coworker friend of mine and I invited him so many times and he ended up going to church with another friend of ours. But the church you went to had a really unique tradition that when he got there, they would not let him inside and usher met him at the door and said, son, we can't, we want you here, but you can't come in unless you're wearing a suit jacket. And they, and he's like, I just, I wanted him to come to church. You can't come in, but we first time. Yes. First time from what I understand being at church. And my, I heard it later. He's like, man, I tried to go to church and you would think that they would let someone in who wants to learn about God. And my heart just dropped how we can create barriers for people that would want to build a relationship with the Lord. And that's something that kind of makes me feel like, okay, maybe it wasn't, maybe it wasn't a table. Maybe Jesus would kick over a suit jacket closet to try to get people to be able to experience his love. But I love the thought of the justice heart of God wanting to get rid of anything that would prevent his people from really getting to know him. So I kind of like seeing that aspect of the Lord, but it also

makes me a little like, okay, but hopefully I'm not doing anything like that. Yeah. A little bit of a nervousness. I said, Danielle, what, what was, what kind of emotions were going through your heart thinking about that passage? Well, first I was thinking through it's, it's only a couple of verses long, this passages, but it's so rich. Like there's so much involved in this story. Um, the, when I first read it, it's shock. It's initially shock because how mad must Jesus have been to have to come in and like flip tables, I think through like, you know, my parents and anytime they were maybe mad at us and like exploded on us. I'm like, what, what all had to lead up to that for that to happen? Um, and then I go towards curiosity because I think about like the marketplace happening didn't just happen overnight. It's not like it was like, Oh, we're going to build this big marketplace and we're going to start selling lambs for way higher the cost than they should be. And save money, live better. Exactly. Exactly. It's not angles. Um, but, but I think through like what had to take place in the hearts of the merchants over time that it got to the place of, we're going to take what is this pure, beautiful place, the temple, it's the house of prayer. It's the house of worship. And we're going to, we're going to see if we can make some money here instead, like what thoughts had to start happening over time in the, in the minds of these merchants to start even thinking through something like that. Yeah. Um, let alone like there were people that were coming because they were like, Oh, there's a marketplace. I want to go buy some things. There's, there's just different motives at play throughout the entire story. if you really sit and think about it.

What kind of motives do you think? So it's like, because like you said, there were a lot, like what kind of things? Yeah, I mean, probably greed would be a big one. I think there was some passivity involved. I think that pride is a big one. I think I see pride in this a lot because it's a sense of control. It's a sense of how can we take over what is meant to be this pure thing? The scripture says that Jesus said, you've made it a den of robbers, a den of thieves. And I just think through like the control aspect of what that is, like they're trying to take a place that was meant to be holy and pure and robbed it of that purity and change it into something that was impure. I like that aspect of purity and impurity. In fact, it goes to a question that we just got right now from someone live in the chat on YouTube. We told you guys we would take questions live and we are, and this is a great one. I love this, this is from Kimberly. Is this the same as us selling merch or coffee, et cetera, in the lobby before you enter into the sanctuary? And when you think about those two, I can totally see why somebody would might ask that kind of question.

Like, are they the same? Well, when you look at the passage of scripture, every single one of the gospels hone in on one specific uniform piece, which Jesus, when he was cleaning out the temple, one of the things he went after was especially the doves. And what the doves represented in that time of worship is in Leviticus, if you didn't have enough money to maybe bring a lamb for sacrifice, the Lord still wanted everybody to be able to have a way to worship. So a dove was a very inexpensive way for someone to be able to bring their worship to the Lord, but they were even charging exuberant amounts on that, preventing those who were poor from being able to worship. And so what our coffee does, our merch does, that's kind of like an extra benefit that we give people that it does not prevent them from coming into the worship. Like, if they want to, they can walk right past the cafe. Now, if we said you have to have a cup of Starbucks before you come in, but I'm pretty sure we lock down all drinks before people come to the auditorium. We do, our ushers are amazing. Please don't stand our carpets. But the thought is that was keeping people from worshiping. But when we sell merch, this is for people who like want to rep the victory in the church

that they love outside in the environment. Actually, I found merch can be a ways for me to build conversation with people, whether I'm at the gym, yes, I do go, don't put that comment in the comment section, or maybe some other ways, or if I'm in Kroger, that gives me a way to create conversations. And you don't have to buy any of that stuff to be a part, so Miss Kimberly, that was a really, really, really good question. All right, here's another question that we have for the night, which is, are there any areas of your life that maybe Jesus would want to flip over? You know, what is something, and even in our own heart, because we just don't want to look at this passage and then just move on, but we want to have an introspective heart, especially during this week, the most important week of all of history, when we think about what Jesus did for us, what would he say to us in our life? Are there any kinds of tables or areas where the Lord might be saying, you know what, this could be a spot that I would like to speak to? What do you think, Miss Danielle? So for me, I look back on my life, and I never went through any kind of crazy, rebellious stage, didn't go through a partier stage or anything like that. She was born stage, everybody, is that what you're saying?

No. That's awesome. No, but I was raised in a household that we've participated in church since I was little, and I also was known to be the rule follower, even in school, I was always the rule follower. So when I reflect back, I'm thinking through even how we were talking about pride earlier, thinking through all the ways that pride has come into play in my own life, and how the Lord is always quick to address it for me. And I think through a certain story of, there was a time where I had this job, I used to live in Nashville, I had this job, and I felt like the Lord had told me to quit the job. And I was like, huh. And then I did the whole prideful, oh no, I've gotta pay my bills, I'm gonna keep this job. Yeah, you were making reason with it, you were like, oh, did he really say that? Totally, yeah. And so I'm thinking through it, and I'm like, yeah, no, the Lord didn't say that to me, I made it up. I actually don't like this job. I'm just gonna stay anyways until I figure it out and I have my own plan ahead of me. And then a month later, the whole company went under. Wow. And had I not been prideful in that moment and not only listened to the Lord, but obeyed him,

I've always been curious, like, what did the Lord have for me? Because we know that he has a plan for us and we know that he has a next for us sometimes. And in my pridefulness, I was like, no, I'm gonna be the person that's in control. And that has been something that I've seen like replay throughout my life in different shapes and forms and ways of where pride has been a little thing that it just comes up, bubbles up a little bit. And you're like, you don't really recognize it at first until there's something big happening in front of you. And then you're like, oh, oh, wow. Similar how you just, before you, I'd said, the merchant, where they set up shop, it didn't just happen overnight. It wasn't just like, okay, we're just, everyone, here's all your selling tables and I have all the coins and everything. Yeah, similar to how pride builds up over time. Exactly. And it wasn't, yeah, that's amazing. Yeah, that's something that makes me reflect on, all right, Lord, hearing you share that makes me go, all right, is that something that I need to process even though I'm in my own heart? And a lot of you guys are putting some really good comments and I wanna read a couple of them. We have on YouTube, Chip said, there might be some tables of complacency in his heart.

Man, that hit me as well. That it's too easy to just be like, you know, whatever. I got so much going on right now. Yeah, I could focus on this and maybe the Lord's leading me, but I've got this and this and this to work on. I can do that. I can put stuff on the back burner and say, okay, Lord, yeah, you could be speaking to that. I'll get to it eventually, I promise. But I got stuff I have to go do for you first, right? Yeah, that's. You know, I have all these other things, but man, he's so personable that he does look at us individually where we're at. Here's another one, I like this one. Jocelyn, this one probably got me the most. Jocelyn, I'm right in this camp with you about how one thing the Lord might be working with her on is tables of gossip at work, which, man, just talking at work is just like it's so, it's almost like a line to even figure out where it's at. But like for me personally, where the Lord's been working with me lately, where I feel like I love information. I'm the guy that loves to listen to news. Isn't that weird? I don't know what's wrong with me. No, you do though. I love the news, mainly because I love. People be on the background and be like,

oh, hey, Liz. I'm like, hey, guess what happened in Hollywood today or guess what happened in politics? Which, man, I don't know why I love that kind of stuff. Why do I like, I love, I love listening. I like, you know what? I like to write jokes about it. That's why. You're human, you're broken. That's what it is. Yeah, that's right. I'm just kidding. You too. And so I've, I can find myself leaning into stuff, even like news stories so much so that I can not be positioning myself to listen to the Lord as much. So recently the Lord's told me, I feel like he can be put on my heart to stop listening to podcasts and new stuff on my drive into work and just have a silent car and try to spend that time with him, which when I first thought about it was like, but it's 85. I need something to distract me. It's, traffic in Atlanta's crazy. It's awful sometimes. But it's been real special. The Lord, I think, has been like really speaking to me

about some things during that time. And so like when, we can sometimes be nervous about the Lord flipping tables over, but it's worth it, yeah. That makes me think about earlier when we were talking about, it's the little things that happen over time. So talking about the gossip piece again, I think that's an easy, easy trap for anybody to fall in because some, for some people, they probably like to gossip, but some people start off with a pure motive and a pure intent in it. And it's the motive of either they want to know the information or they want to care. They feel like they want to care for somebody. And then over time it becomes something bigger and it turns into a trap of gossip, you know? Yes, yes. And thank God for the ability to repent. I'm so grateful for his mercy that he sees these areas and this is his mercy, his kindness, that draws us back to him in these moments. Here's a question we got from somebody watching, Rylan, Rylan Hill, I believe had a question about the people who were in the temple. When Jesus said, you've turned this into like a den of thieves and robbers. How were they robbing from God in that kind of moment? Anybody want to toss that up?

What do you guys think? How were the people who were in the area of the temple, you said of the merchants, how were they robbing from God in that area? I think, I think there's, there's two ways. There's the physical way first, which is, um, as we saw in the video, pastor Johnson was talking about how they were selling these lambs and they were marking the prices up. So they were making it really expensive for all of these people that are coming in that are, and some of them are poor, um, and they can't afford that, but they're, this was a place that they're meant to come and bring a spotless lamb, um, as a sacrifice to be able to come into this house of prayer and to worship God. And so they were stealing physically that way. But I also think the intangible, the thing that you can't see is that it was stealing the purity of what the temple was meant for. And it was making it an impure thing instead of a pure thing. And so that was more of a heart piece than an actual thing that you could see. So, yep, that was powerful. That's, that's a perfect answer. So Rylan, thanks for sending that in. All right. We have, um, one more question before we go to like a, an action step for, for tomorrow to think about and pray. Here's, here's the last question for us to kind of wrap up. What do you, what do you think closeness, why do you think closeness is such a big deal to God? I think it's a big deal because he cares. Like what I love about the scripture is we see so much personality of him. Um, and all of us three could read it collectively and come up with a different version of how we heard it. And I love that he's such a father when it comes to us just spending time with

him. So even for you, like, I love that God, and I love that you shared, but I love that God was like, Hey, Hey Steven, uh, my son, I would love if you just spend time with me. Like he's a jealous God and he's, he gets jealous. Um, rightfully so, of all the things that could be taken away from him. Um, I think I love him flipping tables. I love the scripture and a lot of people, it scares them. Cause you're like, Oh my goodness. Like Jesus is supposed to be so kind or he's supposed to be so loving. And I think even in this, even in his anger because I feel like as humanity, we often correlate anger with hatred or we correlate anger with selfishness or pride or fill in whatever blank, um, because we're broken and because we're human. But I think Jesus had every right to be angry. And it's, I think it's important to know that in his anger is only love. Um, I had a friend say, uh, his anger is this, is the same kind of love just as loving. And it's, it is as loving as his kindness. Um, so he flipped this table. I think one just to, I think he was mad. He was angry. He was so angry. I mean, have you ever thought about flipping them? Like, Oh yes. As a dad at my house, that's a regular basis. All right. I don't know what your kids are doing right now, but you better be watching and I'll find out when I get home. So I think even breaking down the father's heart for that. And there's so many different ways of why closeness I think is so important to God. Um, I mean like, do you want to speak to that? As far as the father's heart? Yeah. I think that, um, as I, you know, shepherd my own sons, I,

I love being able to be able to see a little bit farther than they do just because of the experience. So being able to, uh, say, Oh, you know what? I can see maybe a couple of steps ahead of you right now. And I can see where this is going. Let, let me coach you. Let me be a dad, but making sure that I, I can speak it in a way where they can, they can hear it. And I feel like when we ask the Lord, like, all right, we're going to invite you to look at us personally and see what kind of tables are in our heart that maybe you want to flip over. I don't want us to think that that means there's some big sin that God wants to adjust it. That's, that might not be it. It might be something where like, uh, you could be going down this direction in your life and maybe the Lord is like, Hey, this could be fine, but man, I got something so much better right over here. Not because there's a big sin, but because I want to direct you to something that's even better that you might not even know about. So I think then we, when we humble ourselves and say, okay, we want to take in, here's our action step for, for, for tonight. We want to take a few moments after this video was done and invite the Lord to speak to us, which I'm telling you like a loving kind father, he's going to do it. And I might feel like he's kicking something over and I, we invite him to because he's taking us somewhere that's better than what we could imagine. So after, after we log off, I want you to maybe grab the devoted album album by victory house worship, have some, some nice contemplative worship in the background or even silence and get somewhere where it's just you and the Lord and say, okay, God, search me. Like David prayed, search me and know me and see if there's anything that you're wanting to remove in my life and we will always be better for it. So maybe you like we were talking about last night as we're going through this the week we have even some more incredible videos to watch whether it's Tuesday, Wednesday and more guests they're gonna be joining us as well. So

we want to invite you to maybe invite some friends to join along with us on Wednesday or on Tuesday, Thursday but also for Easter as well and we have lots of locations all around in the Atlanta area. Here's a QR code we're gonna put up on the screen to help you find a location that's close to you. We have a campus in Hamilton Mill, North Cobb, Midtown and Norcross that so we're all over the Atlanta area and they have lots of special services beginning at on Friday, Saturday and also on Sunday and each one has unique services so make sure you find out the one that's closest to you and the one that fits your family well. I would suggest if you're bringing a friend Saturday is like perfect because you can invite them to a service, grab a bite to eat with them afterwards. We're just believing that the way that God's working in our hearts right now God's gonna start doing that in our sons, our daughters, our friends, our co-workers. We're believing for some great things to continue happening throughout this upcoming week and again I want to say in the chat thank you Arthur Scott for sharing with us and Denise Jocelyn for being a part of the stream tonight. We're gonna be taking some more questions all throughout the week. I'm excited for what's going to continue going. May I say something to our audience for the action step actually? I would love if you guys are encouraged when you do do this action step you just kind of sit down and have your hands open and your heart open to the Lord. You're asking like Lord examine me, search me. He may not answer right away and I just know just to be open and listening like okay Lord like I'm gonna ask you a question and for some of you he very well may be like yep you know what you did this week or hey this is not the direction or the best that I have for you. That's good just like Pastor Stephen was saying but it's just not my best and here's what I want you to do. You may hear that tomorrow, you may hear that next week. Just know that he will and is speaking to you and so I just I just don't want you to be discouraged if you don't hear anything tonight. Just know he's a perfect timed God and he is for sure going to speak to you. Yeah and I encourage you maybe if you don't feel anything impressed in your heart to jump into maybe the Psalms, read a couple

Psalms or a proverb, read the passage about when Jesus went into the temple and I feel like God uses his word in so many special ways you know to kind of lead us and guide us and thank you for being here with us tonight everybody. Danielle. Let me add this one one more thing. I love it. Here we go. This is like the addendum. This is good. I think it's answer this last question about why God wants to be close with us. I think about how he he created us and I think about like if you're an entrepreneur or you're somebody who's ever created anything at all it's like you create it and it's your baby and it's your it's yours and you love it and then it takes me to Psalm 139 which Pastor Steven was just talking about you know go jump into Proverbs or Psalms. Go read Psalm 139 because it talks about how we were uniquely made, how God made every single one of us completely individually and it talks about how well he knows us. It talks about how we were knit. He knew us when we were knit in our mother's womb like he knew us before anybody else got to ever see us. Yeah and so why wouldn't he why wouldn't he love us? He knows our thoughts from afar. He knows when we're sitting up and we're lying down. He knows everything about us. He knows all the most intimate things about us and he wants a close intimate relationship with us. It's so important to him and it should be so important to us to to pursue that so I encourage you as well. Jump into Psalms. Go read Psalm 139. You'll love it. Yeah that's one of my favorites. I love that Psalm. I think even on the website right now somebody put down the way that that we feel God's love in that kind of way is Ty Davidson that when we're closer to the Lord he fills us up and it begins to even block the things that we're taking away from his grace. That's good. On Facebook, Kevin, thanks for joining along with us Mr. Williams. I think it is a big deal to draw closer to God because when we do that we learn more of his character. We learn more about him. All right what about crew? Do you guys have anything you want to say? I hate to say we're gonna wrap up and then you guys. We good? Anyone else? Calvin? You good? Okay give me a thumbs up. All right. I just love, I love tonight. I think we're in such a great setup of hearing how much God loves us and especially to know what's to come just makes it all

that much more special and daunting I think you know. I'm really excited. Don't forget to share this. If you have a friend that wasn't able to make it tonight and you feel like this could this could bless them. After we're done you can still grab this link and share and invite them to join along tomorrow night as well. Have a great night, everyone.